Quest for College

The latest issue of the Cult of the Purple Cow Quarterly-- er, I mean, the Williams Alumni Review has a story about a woman I knew in college (she was a senior when I was a freshman) who has started a non-profit organization called Quest for College, working to help prepare kids for college (annoyingly, the story is only available as a PDF file). The vehicle for this is a board game that she developed:

The game board features a student's path through high school, including points that colleges will consider in the application process. Four players or teams roll the die to move along the board after correctly answering one of 60 questions on the set of game cards. Stumbling blocks along the way include "suspended for fighting" and players must move backwards for disrespecting a teacher.

"Your disciplinary record is going to show up," Coleman said. "That's something they ought to consider. We're looking for good citizens. You may have stellar testing and your grades are on point, but if you've got a couple of incidents, that's something that a lot of schools just won't touch."

(The quote is from the press page at the Quest for College site.)

This is interesting for a couple of reasons (I mean, beyond the fact that it was done by somebody I know): first and most important, it's a reminder of some of the class divides that don't even occur to a lot of us. Both of my parents went to college (and, in fact, met in college), so even as a kid, I always knew I would eventually go off to college somewhere, and more or less what that involved. Even today, though, there are large numbers of people who don't have that family background, and don't know things that most people in academia take for granted.

The second interesting thing is kind of an "I'm a Bad Person" item, in that my first reaction on reading that the project was centered around a board game was a big "oh-how-dorky-and-cliche" eye roll. I tend to find didactic games obvious and lame, often to the point of being annoying.

But, again, this is probably one of those invisible division things-- just because I find the didactic-game concept lame doesn't mean that this game will strike its target audience that way. After all, we've already established that I'm not in the target audience... And given the sheer number of didactic games out there being used for one purpose or another, they must work pretty well for somebody.

Anyway, it's always nice to hear that people I know are doing well, and doing good things. I hope the Quest for College venture is successful, and I thought I should post something here, for the sake of the six readers I have who are interested in educational outreach.

(Memo to "Uncle Al": Don't bother commenting on this. I don't want to hear it.)